3 Levels of Deep Learning Competence

Deep learning is not a magic bullet, but the techniques have shown to be highly effective in a large number of very challenging problem domains.

This means that there is a ton of demand by businesses for effective deep learning practitioners.

The problem is, how can the average business differentiate between good and bad practitioners?As a deep learning practitioner, how can you best demonstrate that you can deliver skillful deep learning models?In this post, you will discover the three levels of deep learning competence, and as a practitioner, what you must demonstrate at each level.

After reading this post, you will know:Let’s get started.

The Three Levels of Deep Learning CompetencePhoto by Bernd Thaller, some rights reserved.

This post is divided into three parts; they are:How do you know if a practitioner is competent with deep learning?It is a hard problem.

Both are good signs of understanding.

But, on real business projects, we don’t need explanations.

We need working models that make skillful predictions.

We need results.

Results trump almost everything.

Certainly results trump classical signals of competence such as education pedigree, work history, and experience level.

Most developers and developer hiring managers know this already.

Some don’t.

The best way to answer the question of whether a practitioner is competent or not is to show, not tell.

The practitioner must provide evidence to demonstrate that they understand how to apply deep learning techniques and use them to develop skillful models.

This means developing a public portfolio of projects using open source libraries and publicly available datasets.

This has benefits for a number of reasons:An honest discussion of real projects will quickly shed light on whether the practitioner knows what they are doing, or not.

As a practitioner, the question becomes: what are the levels of competence and what are the expectations at each level?Projects can be carefully chosen in order to both develop and, in turn, demonstrate specific skills.

In this section, we’ll outline the levels of deep learning competence and the types of projects that you, as a practitioner, can develop and implement in order to learn, acquire and demonstrate each level of competence.

There are three levels of deep learning competence; they are:This may not be complete, but provides a good starting point for practitioners in a business setting.

If you have more ideas of levels of competence or projects, please let me know in the comments below.

Now, let’s take a closer look at each level in turn.

This level of competence with deep learning assumes that you are already a machine learning practitioner.

It is the lowest level and shows that you can use the tools and methods effectively on a classical machine learning type project.

It does not mean that you are expected to have advanced degrees or that you are a master practitioner.

Instead, it means that you are familiar with the basics of applied machine learning and the process of working through a predictive modeling project end-to-end.

This is not a strict prerequisite as these elements can quickly be learned at this level if needed.

Competence at this level demonstrates the following:Library competence means that you know how to set up the development environment and use the most common aspects of the API in order to define, fit, and use neural network models to make predictions.

It also means that you know the basic differences between each type of neural network model and when it might be appropriate to use it.

It does not mean that you know every function call and every parameter.

It also does not mean that you know the mathematical description for specific techniques.

Modeling competence means that you know how to work through a machine learning project end-to-end using neural network models.

Specifically, it means that you are able to complete tasks such as:It means that you can effectively harness neural networks on new projects in developing and using a skillful model.

It does not mean that you’re an expert at using all or even some neural network techniques or that you can achieve the best possible result.

It also does not mean that you are familiar with all data types.

Projects to demonstrate this level of competence should use an open source deep learning library (such as Keras) and show each step of the applied machine learning process on public tabular machine learning datasets.

This does not mean achieving the best possible result for a dataset or even that using a neural network is the best possible model for the dataset.

Instead, the goal is to demonstrate the capability of using neural networks, most likely simpler model types such as Multilayer Perceptrons.

A good source of datasets are the small in-memory datasets used widely in the 1990s and 2000s to demonstrate machine learning and even neural network performance, such as those listed on the UCI Machine Learning Repository.

The fact that the datasets are small and easily fit in memory means that the scope of the projects is also small, permits the use of robust model evaluation schemes such as k-fold cross-validation, and may require careful model design in order to avoid overfitting.

I would expect a range of projects handling the normal concerns of standard predictive modeling projects, such as:Varied input data in order to demonstrate data preparation suitable for neural networks:Varied target variables in order to demonstrate a suitable model configuration:This level of competence assumes Level 1 competence and shows that you can use classical as well as modern techniques in order to get the most from deep learning neural network models.

It demonstrates the following:Learning competence means that you know how to configure and tune the hyperparameters of the learning algorithm in order to get good or better performance.

This means skill in tuning hyperparameters of stochastic gradient descent, such as:This means skill in tuning aspects that influence model capability, such as:This means skill in defusing problems with learning, such as:It also means skill with techniques to accelerate learning, such as:Generalization competence means that you know how to configure and tune a model in order to reduce overfitting and improve model performance on out of sample data.

This includes classical techniques such as:This also includes modern techniques such as:Predictive competence means that you know how to use techniques to reduce the variance of a chosen model when making predictions and combine models in order to lift performance.

This means use of ensemble techniques, such as:Projects that demonstrate this level of competence may be less focused on all of the steps in the process of applied machine learning and instead may focus on a specific problem and technique or range of techniques designed to alleviate it.

For the three areas of competence, these could be:Again, this does not mean achieving the best possible performance on a specific problem, only demonstrating the correct use of a technique and its ability to address the identified issue.

Choice of datasets and even problem type may matter less than the clear manifestation of the issue that is being investigated.

Some datasets naturally introduce problems; for example, small training datasets and imbalanced datasets can result in overfitting.

Standard machine learning datasets could be used.

Alternately, problems can be contrived to demonstrate the issue or dataset generators could be used.

This level of competence assumes Level 1 and 2 competence and shows that you can use deep learning neural network techniques in specialized problem domains.

This is the demonstration of deep learning techniques beyond simple tabular datasets.

This is also the demonstration of deep learning on the types of problem domains and specific problem instances where the techniques may perform well or even be state-of-the-art.

It demonstrates the following:Data handling competence means that you can acquire, load, use, and prepare the data for modeling.

This will very likely demonstrate competence with standard libraries for handling the data and standard techniques for preparing the data.

Some examples of domains and data handling might include:Technique competence means that you can correctly identify the techniques, models, and model architectures that are appropriate for a given domain-specific modeling problem.

This will very likely require a familiarity with common methods used in the academic literature and/or industry for general classes of problems in the domain.

Some examples of domains and domain-specific methods might include:Projects that demonstrate this level of competence must cover the applied machine learning process, include careful model tuning (aspects of competence Levels 1 and 2), and must focus on domain-specific datasets.

Datasets may be sourced from:There may be a large range of problems that belong to a given problem domain, although there will be a subset that is perhaps more common or prominent and these can be the focus of demonstration projects.

Some example of domains and prominent sub-problems might include:It may be desirable to demonstrate competence at a high level across multiple domains, and the data handling, modeling techniques, and skills will translate well.

It may also be desirable to specialize in a domain and to narrow down to demonstration projects on subtle sub-problems after the most prominent problems and techniques have been addressed.

Because projects of this type may demonstrate the broader appeal of deep learning (e.

g.

the ability to outperform classical methods), there is a danger in jumping straight to this level.

It may be possible for experienced practitioners, with ether deeper knowledge and experience with other machine learning methods or with deeper knowledge and experience with the domain.

Nevertheless, it is significantly harder as you may have to learn and you must harness and demonstrate all three levels of competence at once.

This is by far the biggest mistake of beginners who dive into domain-specific projects and crash into roadblock after roadblock given they are not yet competent with the library, the process of working through a project, and the process of improving model performance, let alone the specific data handling and modeling techniques used in the domain.

Again, it is possible to start at this level; it just triples the workload and may result in frustration.

Did this competence framework resonate?.Do you think there are any holes?.Let me know in the comments.

This section provides more resources on the topic if you are looking to go deeper.

In this post, you discovered the three levels of deep learning competence and as a practitioner, what you must demonstrate at each level.

Specifically, you learned:Do you have any questions?.Ask your questions in the comments below and I will do my best to answer.

…with just a few lines of PythonDiscover how in my new Ebook: Deep Learning With PythonIt covers self-study tutorials and end-to-end projects on topics like: Multilayer Perceptrons, Convolutional Nets and Recurrent Neural Nets, and more…Skip the Academics.